A Joseph Wambaugh-ish policeman-author, run up against a Himalayan-sized writer's block, collaborates with a professional hitman to expose a bloody corporate head. ("Corporations don't have people killed!" proclaims the much-to-learn author in the early stages of his researches.) Brian Dennehy, who speaks all lines the same way, with total conviction …
Any mote of urban grit in the forerunner, or anyway in the opening credits sequence of the forerunner, has been neatly whisked away by Kleenex. And since the brash Detroit detective (Eddie Murphy) has already made the acquaintance of Frick and Frack on the Beverly Hills police force (Judge Reinhold, …
Further lengthening an already lengthy rut, Robert Altman again takes his source material, if not exactly his "inspiration," from a theater piece, in this case Christopher Durang's comedy about a match made through the Personals of New York Magazine. And then he brings to it that same offhanded style, that …
Strictly routine case of police corruption, with dashes of Cajun flavoring around New Orleans, and a mildly spicy sex scene ("Stop that," the woman protests, in reference to the man's out-of-frame hand. "That?" he leers. "Or that?"). Its most distinctive feature, however, is its attitude of Old World (or Man's …
Namely Chicago, as of 1957, and as seen through the eyes of an Indiana country boy. The setting is permeated with the romance of the wild side -- hotels, bars, strip clubs, gyms, and the literal and figurative tumble of the dice -- and only slightly demystified by the rough-grained …
A highly satisfying and only slightly dirty-dealing cat-and-mouse game, or really cat-and-cat, that opposes two feminine archetypes, the contemporary career woman (and not without personal sacrifices: "You're not a happy person," her boss observes) and the classical femme literally fatale, the independent and the parasite, the equal-rights competitor and the …
Sufficient idea for a Harold Lloyd two-reeler: a blind date, on an important business occasion, with a woman who mustn't be allowed to drink. It sets up all right, and the joke-making is thoroughly, dispassionately professional. But the idea is depleted by the time the woman begins to sober up …
And then, caught without I.D. in a raid by La Migra, deported to Tijuana, there to stay till the end of the movie. Some social comment along the way, little of it funny, much of it schmaltzy. But the real purpose of this spin-off from his recorded spoof of Springsteen's …
Rather more yellowness, actually, than brightness, at least on the visual level. The narrative is even dimmer, a father-son conflict involving magic poison, a magic post, a magic necklace, a magic prism, a magic bone, a magic this, a magic that. The magic all works, but it doesn't "play." Directed …
A comedy of varying shades of lightness, about a romantic triangle among the hard-driven workers on a network news team. Writer-director James L. Brooks often seems to draw on, and polish up, his previous work in series television. The anchorman who represents style over substance (William Hurt) is a realistic …
Comedy thriller, although really not much of either, about a part-time cat burglar and rest-of-the-time bookseller who falls under suspicion of murder. The character is tailored so snugly to the personality of Whoopi Goldberg that it stops being a character anymore -- or actually never starts. Bobcat Goldthwait is not …
Well, somebody sooner or later had to cross the Australian continent. And somebody sooner or later had to make a movie about them. This is it, a hundred and twenty-seven years later, to be exact. The first scene, with a topiary maze illusionistically opening up onto the Outback, is daring …
Very slight variation on West Side Story: no singing, and Juliet is now Chinese, but Romeo's still "Tony," and there's dancing at the disco if not in the streets. The parallels drawn between life in Chinatown and life in Little Italy are decently liberal in intent, but the doomed-lovers angle, …
A comical Common Man, a pulchritudinous spirit, a pack of wolves with glow-in-the-dark cartooned eyes, an attic of ambulatory mummies, a kung-fu wizard with a stick-on beard, a thousand-year-old tree monster with a tongue as long as the entire Leviathan. Never more than silly, often less than fun -- not, …
A wooden Indian come to life, a carnivorous slime creature in a mountain lake, a Living Dead hitchhiker -- a trio of terrible tales of terror from Stephen King. Someone throws up in each of the first two, and there are inexplicable allusions to the Cisco Kid in each of …